Dine Here News
Update Complete
February 11th, 2010 1 AM PT - We have just put live the latest update to Dine Here. The first big change is location selection and a new top menu bar in the header. The home page will display only reviews and restaurants for Metro Vancouver. To view reviews or restaurant in cities outside of Metro Vancouver, change your location using the location drop down menu.
To view the new search options, simply click the options link in the search portion of the header. This will give you two new sub options to choose from: Locations and Cuisines. If you are looking at a specific city, the locations will display all the Neighbourhoods that are associated with the restaurants in that city. If your location is "Metro Vancouver" then you will see the cities in that region, not neighbourhoods. The search results will now default to 20 restaurants per page (from 10) with an option to select up to 50.
Please keep in mind that we still need to optimize this update to determine the best way of what searching options to show by default; this will be done in the coming days. As well, the neighbourhoods for restaurants outside of Vancouver are gradually being updated over time so some cities may have a lack of 'hoods as search options.
Search Upgrade
February 10th, 2010 2:10PM PT - We have finally completed development and testing of the new search functionality. The new features include searching by multiple cities, neighbourhoods and cuisines. Neighbourhoods have been expanded to all cities, not just Vancouver. Keep in mind that we are updating these on the fly so not all restaurants outside of Vancouver have restaurants unless they have been added or updated after December 1, 2009.
By default, there will be 20 search results displayed instead of 10 and this can be increased to 50. As well, there will be a location selector that controls what city you want to focus on. By default, the homepage will be Metro Vancouver which includes Vancouver, Richmond, Surrey, etc. but this can be drilled down to a specific city or changed to a city outside Metro Vancouver.
We are planning to perform some maintenance either tonight around midnight or tomorrow morning and we will include this upgrade at that time. Hopefully everyone is happy with the changes that are imminent.
Upgraded Server
January 22th, 2010 10:15 AM PT - We just upgraded our server to one with more horsepower so hopefully this should help cope with some of the sluggish site performance. We still have a site update in the works to address many of the searching issues but it was delayed so that we could improve the hardware first. More to come next week...
Scheduled Maintenance on Tuesday January 19th at 9 AM
January 18th, 2010 5 PM PT - We are planning a maintenance period tomorrow morning (Tuesday January 19th) at 9am. We will be upgrading the server and expect to be down for about an hour or less.
Site Down
January 15th, 2010 1 PM PT - The site was down this morning due to a system failure. We were able to recover all the data except for a few reviews which will be re-added shortly. We apologize for the inconvenience.
Maintenance Tonight
January 4th, 2010 11:30 AM PT - We have a planned maintenance period tonight from 11PM - Midnight. The site will be brought down to perform a cosmetic update to reviews on the front, restaurant and user pages.
Happy Holidays!
December 23, 2009 Noon PT - Unfortunately, we did not complete the update we are working on that addresses many current issues with the site. It has been put on hold for the Christmas break and we will continue working on it on Monday. Here is what is under development:
- Truncated Reviews - New summary view for the review pages on the home and city pages that will simply list the restaurant information, review title, user and overall rating. To view the full details including all the ratings and review text, you can click on the review title.
- Overhauled search - We are doing a significant reimplementation of the search which will allow you to search by multiple cities, cuisines and neighbourhoods in one single search. We will also increase the results per page and provide the ability to change this as part of the search options.
There will be some other minor updates but the above features will be the main focus on this update. Merry Christmas!
Thursday Night Maintenance
December 17, 2009 8:00 PM PT - The site will be down tonight at 11:30pm PT for about a half an hour to optimize the website some more. Due to page caching issues, we have changed the date format to simply display the date the review was submitted rather than how long ago.
Maintenance on Monday at Midnight
December 14, 2009 5:00 PM PT - We will be going offline tonight for about 20 minutes or so at midnight. We will be updating the site to fix a number of bug and optimize the searching. There will be no visible improvements other than speed increases and some link corrections.
Maintenance Tonight at Midnight
December 8, 2009 5:00 PM PT - We will be going offline tonight for about half an hour or so at midnight. We will be updating the site to fix a number of bugs.
Due to some issues with URL conflicts, we were forced to change the URLs for user profile pages to http://dinehere.ca/profile/username. If you have linked to a user profile page you will need to update your links.
Database Maintenance
December 7, 2009 2:00 AM PT - Unfortunately there were issues performing the database upgrade so we have rescheduled this to try again tomorrow night. The maintenance period will be on Tuesday from 12AM - 2AM.
Yet Another Update
December 4, 2009 5:15 PM PT - We will be performing a database upgrade at midnight on Sunday (Monday morning) to fix some of the performance issues experienced on the website. Hopefully this upgrade combined with a website update planned on Tuesday morning will improve website performance. It will also include some minor enhancements to the website to address a few of the usability issues.
Another Update
December 3, 2009 1:30 PM PT - Here is what we are working on right now:
- Performance issues - We made some improvements yesterday and we have some more optimizations planned for tonight to help cope with Friday's usual heavy traffic load.
- Neighbourhood searching - Unfortunately, this was removed from the website when we launched the new version due to technical issues. This will be re-added soon. Until then, try entering a postal code for the location to find all the restaurants near that location.
- Front page - We will be making some modifications to the homepage that will display the reviews in truncated format so that people don't have to scroll much. Look for this to be added soon.
We request your patience while we transition to the new website. We will be actively developing improvements based on your feedback so feel free to contact us.
Update #2
December 2, 2009 1 PM PT - Thank you everyone for all the excellent feedback. Based on all the feedback, we will be making a change to the reviews on the home page and city pages to only show the summary information. If you click on the review, you can view it in its entirety or be sent to the review on the restaurant page. Please keep sending us feedback as we will be compiling everyone's thoughts and using that for our next major update.
We have been working around the clock to improve the performance of the website and it should be noticeably faster now but we still have more work to do. More to come...
New Website Update
December 1, 2009 9:20 PM PT - We've made some improvements to the web page loading times. The site seems to be running much faster but we are going to continue to look at ways to improve the site performance. More to come...
New Website
December 1, 2009 - We just launched our new website today. We have a lot of work still to do. Here are some of the things you can expect in the immediate future:
- Improved website loading times
- Re-adding "previous reviews" - reviews where a user submitted a more recent review for a restaurant are not being displayed right now.
- Re-adding the ability to search by neighbourhod; in the meantime try searching by postal code
- Prioritizing new features based on your feedback - send us an email and tell us what you want next
Please send us your feedback!
November 15th, 2009 - We are now on Twitter.
Fast Food Chains
September 15th, 2009 - We are actively filtering out fast food chains. We were hoping to have already upgraded to the new web site (which has this feature) but its going to be another week or two until that happens. In the meantime, have decided to filter out fast food chains on the existing site unless you specifically select the "Fast Food" cuisine in your searches. This is going to skew restaurant counts so you may notice that they are different.
Happy Canada Day!
July 1, 2009 - We've added a new cuisine for hot pot.
More Cuisines
June 20, 2009 - We've added a new cuisine for Shanghainese and Szechuan food. Keep the feedback coming.
Salad Cuisine
June 15, 2009 - We've added a new cuisine for salad. Thanks for the continuing feedback from everyone who has sent us an email. Do you have a comment or would you like to see something new on Dine Here? Drop us a line!
New Cuisines
May 18, 2009 - We've added Fish & Chips to our list of cuisines. We have added several cuisines in the last 6 months including Coffee, Crepes, Chicken, Bubble Tea, Izakaya, Singaporean and Pita.
Inspection Reports Follow Up
May 1, 2009 - 2PM - We have created an inspection reports help page to explain the food inspection reports being listed for each restaurant and how to find the "health code" so that it can be included in the restaurant information when adding or updating a restaurant.
Inspection Reports
April 30th, 2009 - Noon - We are experimenting with adding Vancouver Coastal Health inspection reports. You may see a blue icon under the map icon called Reports which links to inspection reports from VCH. If you have feedback on this, please let us know.
Cambie Street Neighbourhood
April 29th, 2009 - 3PM - We've added a new neighbourhood in Vancouver called Cambie Street. Welcome back!
Email Link
April 24th, 2009 - 1PM - We've added an email link for all restaurant listings that contain an email address.
More Restaurant Information
April 23th, 2009 - 2PM - We've added new metadata to all restaurants such as what type of service they offer, meals served and other features including view, television, AYCE, etc. We will be frantically trying to update this information but we need your help. There is a "Suggest changes" link on every restaurant listing just under the average rating. Please use this link to update any restaurants you are familiar with. Once most of the restaurants have been updated, we will add searching capabilities for this new information.
New Cities and More Restaurant Details Coming Soon
April 21th, 2009 - 10:00AM - We've added two new cities: Chilliwack and Mission. If you are familiar with these cities, give us a hand by adding some new restaurants. We are also working on an update that will add more information to each restaurant including:
- Type of services offered: Waitstaff, Takeout, Delivery, Banquets, Catering
- Features: View, Television, Patio, Wheelchair accessible, Romantic, Live Entertainment, Fine Dining
- Meals: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, All day brunch, Late Night / 24 Hours, All you can eat (AYCE) / Buffet
We will be adding this in the next few days. Once the site has collected this data for a while, we will add the ability to search on this information as well. This new information is in preparation for the new web site so that restaurant data is more complete.
Report Reviews
April 17th, 2009 - 4:20PM - We've added the ability for registered users to report reviews that do no meet our review guidelines. There is a button under each review's ratings labelled "Report" that will take you to the report review form.
New Links
April 13th, 2009 - 4PM - We've cleaned up the links for each restaurant and have added some icons to make this a little easier to read.
Reserve Online
March 31th, 2009 - 4PM - We are experimenting with online reservations by linking to OpenTable. You might notice an Reserve Online link in the links section on some restaurant listings. This is only currently available on a couple hundred restaurants in Metro Vancouver, Victoria and Whistler. (View examples here and here.) If you have any feedback about OpenTable's service, please contact us.
Order Online
March 30th, 2009 - 6PM - We are experimenting with online ordering by linking to YummyWeb. You might notice an Order Online link in the links section on some restaurant listings. This is only currently available on a couple hundred restaurants in Metro Vancouver. (View examples here and here.) If you have any feedback about YummyWeb's service, please contact us.
New Restaurants
March 25th, 2009 - 11:00PM - We have added a restaurant tracker so that you can see all the new restaurants that are added to Dine Here.
New City Added
March 5th, 2009 - 10:00PM - We added a new city today: Abbotsford. Please help us if you live or are familiar with the area by adding some restaurants. We appreciate all the feedback you send so please keep it coming.
Request for Comments
June 6th, 2008 - 8:30 AM - We released an update earlier this week to enhance Dine Here including the much needed value rating. Most of the other enhancements you don't see but serve to make Dine Here better such as improved moderation tools and performance enhancements. We would like to do another update while we continue to work on the new web site and are requesting feedback from you on what we should do.
What features would you like to see added to Dine Here? What do you think Dine Here does well or doesn't do very well? We want to improve the site and need your feedback. Please tell us what you think.
Updated Documentation
June 4th, 2008 - 11:15 AM - We have updated the review guide and have added a Frequently Asked Questions page. We hope this will clear up questions you may have as to why reviews are removed and how to write a good review. Please let us know if you have any comments.
Latest on Move
June 3rd, 2008 - 3:50 PM - They finally restored connectivity to our old data centre so we can at least redirect users to our new server and you can access Dine Here. We may lose this ability so if you are having trouble accessing the site, use www.dinehere.com instead of www.dinehere.ca and it should work. We hope to have this issue straightened out soon and prevent future interruptions.
Dine Here Move
June 3rd, 2008 - 12:30 AM - We had to perform an emergency move at midnight on June 3rd. As we were moving, we lost connectivity to our old data centre and there were some complications. (The same data centre where there was a huge explosion a few days ago.) We *think* we have the kinks worked out but please keep your eye open for problems and let us know if you spot anything. We couldn't do a graceful forward so some users may be getting timeout errors. This issue should be resolved in the next few hours.
You may notice the new rating system including the value rating. The overall rating is no longer user submitted and is instead an average of food, service, value and ambiance. As well, please take a moment to read our updated review guide.
Dine Here is Back...
June 2nd, 2008 - 3:00 PM - Since Saturday, Dine Here was unavailable due to an electrical explosion at our data centre destroying three walls and knocking out the power. Luckily, no servers were damaged and no people were injured. The site was restored Monday afternoon after about 48 hours of downtime.